How to Expand Your VA Business to Include Products

When you first started your business, you probably thought you’d just do it one way. You’d provide services. But, now you want to expand your business to include products. How do you get started?

Believe it or not, you do it the same way you would if you were starting a brand new business. The only difference is that you have plenty of information to help you succeed.

Adding Products to a Service-Based Business

Let’s say you’re a graphic designer who builds web pages and makes banner and advertising graphics. This is a service that you enjoy doing, and you work mainly with book authors. You need to figure out what type of products they buy and need.

* Survey Your Audience – Ask them what they want. You may get some insight that you never even considered. They may already know some graphic design and website products they want but can’t find.

* Brainstorm Ideas – Depending upon your skills, or your access to skills, you can create different types of options. Perhaps your audience needs an easy way to make memes and graphics without you. That might be scary, but that’s how software like Canva.com was created.

* Narrow It Down – The project management system Basecamp.com used to be known as 37signals, and they were a web design firm. They soon realized that they could earn more money providing a product (software as service) like the well-loved project management software, using the skills they already had.

* Tell Your Secrets – One thing service providers might not realize is that other people may want to do what they’re doing. Write a book as a product, or create a course as a product, that can be sold to a new audience that will buy it and implement it.

The important thing to do is to never assume that something will work. Always research every idea by asking your audience, then doing a test market study by having a small launch before moving forward with a huge time investment.